Madagascar Oil in 50.5m AIM float http://www.madagascaroil.com/

StockMarketWire.com

Madagascar Oil Limited, an oil and gas exploration and development company with resources onshore Madagascar, began trading on the AIM market today (November 29).

The company raised 50.5m before expenses through a placing at 95p a share, representing 27.65% of the share capital.

Its market capitalisation following admission was about 182.7m.

Chairman and CEO Laurie Hunter said the placing and admission would help support the company's goals of proving commerciality of the Tsimiroro field area, expanding and upgrading its resource base and further developing drillable prospects on its exploration blocks.

Madagascar shares were trading at 94.5p.

...Roly /.......never be in a hurry to get in on a new float esp one whose virtues are yet to be learnt and analylised by the market / Like water the stock will find its own level of support.......Then you make your play .......Try and get hold of a copy of Peter Odells "Oil and world power" ,,,,,,,,written in 60's when oil was cheap as chips; but more importantly includes analysis and maps reg. where lo sulphur sweet oil is known to exist in abundance ......and in Madagascar it is as abundant as it gets ..But its not the 1960s anymore and the days of cheap oil are well over ..Had Madagascar been a desert we would have been in there years ago .

TFC, i have seen a copy but could only find 1 map which tried to guess where lo sweet sulphur might be, perhaps I missed something or looked at the wrong edition?, most of the book dealt with the politics of oil, past and future, OPEC and their ability to influence the oil price.

Re MOIL, agree entirely, it's intrinsic value is unknown, so without any short term guidance, could well do a random walk a bit lower.

Looking at more recent editions i have discovered the maps were removed from anything after 4th edition of 1975 by which time " Hubberts " peak oil " theory became adopted, accepted, and propogated dogma reg .paradigm of hydrocarbon formation. Plus, of course, the middle east chrisis which by then had opened Pandoras socio-political millitary box of nasties ,,,,,,, .,,,,,,,,,,,,,all probably innocuous but something to bear in mind........

Thank you TFC, i think I saw the 7th or 8th edition(last) which did not have a great deal of relevant material.

I'm keeping an eye on this one, as afr have acreage in the region.

There is a hydrocarbon system in place around western madagascar..........and with a cap of 185m....could be cheap if they pull something out of the bag.

http://moneyam.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/201012061818134688X.html

http://www.afren.com/operations/madagascar/

Not doing much for me this one.

Whatever turn's you on.

This could be a problem

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9267000/9267996.stm

Cute.

Sold out at 82 bid 10% loss

Not keen on these.

Roly / Over the years you have become something of a friend as opposed to a faceless poster; and it pains me to watch a man of your calibre make such elementary mistakes ( we all make them - but this was totally impetuous, cavalier and hence avoidable) ..This is a an absolute pig of a market ; and yet you dived in again without even allowing the stock to find even an iota of support let alone momentum .. Personally i was waiting for morelike 60/ 70p or so ...Why didnt you simply wait and keep your powder dry as i suggested.? A little patience can be/ is rewarded tenfold in this game. You did much the same at NYO- bought at 18-75 and missed the rise to 31p by a whisker .. .........very angry with you today so report to my study at lunchtime.

Is this a good lesson to us all TheFrench Connection. I did not buy any, however is it a heavy oil play, and perhaps one that talks about converting oil shale to fluid oil ?
Shell are trying to do this in Canada, is it economic to do this yet ?

The existing project owners have floated shares to raise about or $ 50m, and the Co is capitalised at about 175 million. It follows that those Madagascar owners are now worth roughly 125 m, as opposed to something with very little open market value several weeks ago. They should have a good Xmas !
We know that oil companies are exciting animals and usually have a lot of enthusiastic followers, and consequently investors who read optimism into them. Therefore the take up of initial shares may well be successful. However shurely institutions have now learnt, or do they get cheap share prior to a float ?
I seriously thought of trying to short them several days ago, but then thought I may be too late !
They say that offshore Madagascar there may be billions of barrels, however as I see it, that is perhaps one year down the line , before Exxon etc may start to drill there.

To cut a long story short, maybe it could be a good play to short after a day or so, any unconvincing oil or mining new issues ??? What price Madagascar Oil ? Stay out.

Lucky i sold 4 day's ago @82


Madagascar Oil Limited

("Madagascar Oil" or the "Company")



Licence Update





The board of directors of Madagascar Oil is today providing an update regarding the group's licences.

Following a meeting between the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons (the "Ministry") and Madagascar Oil in Antananarivo late on Thursday 16 December 2010, the Ministry has indicated that it is interested in acquiring from the Company all of its licences excluding Bemolanga, being blocks 3104, 3105, 3106 and 3107. There can be no guarantee that any price agreed for such an acquisition will be representative of the fair value of such assets. However, the Company has obtained legal advice that all of its licences are valid and that the obligations on both parties are legally binding. Madagascar Oil intends to robustly defend its position.

Pending the resolution of such discussions, the Company has requested that trading in its ordinary shares on AIM be suspended with immediate effect. A further announcement will be made in due course.

Nasty.

The stock of Madagascar Oil has been suspended on London's AIM exchange, just three weeks after its debut in a 50 million (Dh285.52m) initial public offering.

The development is not only a setback for the company - a minnow that reported zero revenue and a small net loss last year - it could also threaten the broader outlook for developing east Africa's biggest known oil resource.

Despite its current lack of revenue or oil production, Madagascar Oil, which has its head office in Houston, Texas, holds concessions for two huge onshore oilfields in Madagascar, each holding billions of barrels of crude. The oil was discovered more than a century ago but remains unexploited because most of the reserves consist of heavy and ultra-heavy crude, which is technically challenging and expensive to produce.

One of the fields, Bemolanga, is an oil sands deposit, in which tar-like bitumen is found liberally mixed with grit. The oil is near the surface and could be mined rather than pumped, then cleaned of sand using technology pioneered in Canada.

Madagascar Oil had already lined up the French oil major Total to help it do just that. It had also shown in a 2008 pilot study that a so-called in situ extraction technology that has been applied successfully to Canadian heavy oil deposits could be used to pump crude from the island's other big onshore oilfield, Tsimiroro.

Furthermore, the company's drilling work to assess Tsimiroro's reserves suggests the field also contains pockets of light oil and significant amounts of gas.

"Our vision is to be the leading in situ and mining producer of light, heavy and bitumen oil onshore in Madagascar, using superior technology and operational excellence to maximise value for the benefit of our shareholders and the people of Madagascar in an environmentally and socially responsible way," the company states on its website.

"This isn't an exploration play; it's an execution play," Laurie Hunter, the chief executive of Madagascar Oil, said last month as he sought to convince investors to back a larger pilot scheme that would use steam to coax as much as 1,000 barrels per day of Tsimiroro's sticky crude from the ground within a year.

But on Thursday, following another upbeat company presentation to analysts, Madagascar's ministry of mines and hydrocarbons served notice that it wanted to take back the Tsimiroro oil licences.

"The ministry has indicated that it is interested in acquiring from the company all of its licences excluding Bemolanga," said Madagascar Oil said on Friday. "There can be no guarantee that any price agreed for such an acquisition will be representative of the fair value of such assets."

While a Tsimiroro pilot may require more than US$1 billion (Dh3.67bn) of further investment, the business could eventually be lucrative. It could establish Madagascar as an oil exporter, while associated gas could fuel power plants badly needed in a country that is burning its hardwood forests for domestic fuel.

The resultant deforestation is simultaneously destroying the habitat of many animal species, such as lemurs, that are found nowhere else on Earth, robbing the island of a unique ecotourism resource.

For the moment, the more ambitious oil sands mining venture with Total has not been threatened. The French company became the project operator in 2008 by acquiring a 60 per cent stake. It would shoulder most of the costs of the proposed mine if the partners decided to proceed.
But Total has other commercial oil sands opportunities that could take priority over a costly project in an unstable African nation lacking infrastructure.

On Friday, Total announced a "strategic alliance" with Suncor Energy, one of Canada's biggest oil sands players, under which the companies will pool their interests in several large Canadian bitumen projects. The deal includes a "p

The deal includes a "p .... really? .... perhaps it's the uric acid that will free up the latent oil

Well spotted [ pun ]